


Bred in the Bone

by rubygirl29



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Bingo, Gen, ccbingo, fear of heredity, fear of insanity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-11
Updated: 2012-07-11
Packaged: 2017-11-09 14:46:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/456688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubygirl29/pseuds/rubygirl29
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint is afraid he will follow his brother's path to crime and madness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bred in the Bone

**Author's Note:**

> Written for cc_bingo prompts _Agateophobia - Fear of Insanity/Patroiophobia - Fear of Heredity_ I don't own Clint Barton and Phil Coulson. They belong to Marvel. I just borrow them once in a while. 
> 
>  
> 
> Author's Note: _Life consists not simply in what heredity and environment do to us but in what we make out of what they do to us. (Harry Emerson Fosdick)._ Sooner or later, Coulson will say this to Clint ...

It's been a bad week. A team of S.H.I.E.L.D agents was lost when Hydra blew up a facility the were raiding. It had been a trap that nobody had seen coming. Natasha had been injured and was in medical with her ankle in a cast and a concussion. Sitwell, who had been on the op, was still unconscious. Clint had been on the roof of the building opposite and had seen the whole thing come down in fire and smoke as he watched helplessly. His voice on Phil's com-link sounded like his vocal cords had been scraped raw. 

Back at S.H.I.E.L.D., once they leave medical having Dr. Wheldon's assurance that Natasha and Sitwell will recover, Phil takes Clint's arm. "Come with me. You shouldn't be alone."

Clint doesn't argue, and that's Phil's first clue that something is wrong. 

^*^*^*^*^*^*^

The Bartons had never been anybody's idea of a picture perfect family. His father was a monster; abusive, cruel, alcoholic. His mother, cowed and beaten into submission by Harold's fists, was too frightened and weak to protect her two sons. Clint loved his mother, but he hated and feared his father. To his shame, the only emotion he felt when the policemen and social worker appeared at their door to tell them that his parents were both dead was relief. He remembered crying into Barney's shirt, and Barney telling him to stop being a baby, sneering at his tears and not understanding the complexity of Clint's emotions.

The orphanage was worse. Clint, small for his age, was bullied, abused and left to his own devices to protect himself. He learned to hide, to be silent, to watch and observe. He discovered that his eyesight was freakishly good, his reflexes faster than the bigger boys. Sometimes Barney protected him, sometimes he joined in the bullying. Barney was smart like that -- knowing what would earn him the most points with the staff and with his peers. Clint never knew which Barney would suddenly emerge; the caring older brother or the hard-fisted, cruel leader of the pack. 

Barney hated the orphanage. One day, a good day for Clint, they saw a poster in town for Carson's Carnival of Traveling Wonders. "That's where we're going, Clint." Barney's eyes were shining. "We'll get out of this shithole and join the circus."

It had been good. For a few years, Clint was happy. Trickshot and Swordsman saw his abilities and trained him; for once he was better than Barney, more valuable than Barney. Not that he thought of it like that. He only wanted Barney to be proud of him, to say, "That's my little brother, the World's Greatest Marksman." 

He didn't. At first it was just cruel teasing. Then physical fights, then drinking. Clint saw the same weaknesses the same cruel streak that he had seen in his father. Clint wasn't a helpless kid anymore; he was a strong, agile young man who could take a punch and give it back twofold. One night, Barney raised his hand and Clint had a knife in his. Before he was even aware of his actions, he was consumed by a red haze of his anger and pain. He came back to himself kneeling on Barney's chest with the point at the knife at his brother's throat, and Barney looking wild-eyed with fear. Clint threw the knife away with a cry of pain. He went to the big top, got his bow and quiver and started shooting, trying to find that calm center that he felt when he had his bow in his hands and a target in his sights.

He was walking toward the target to pull out the arrows studding the bulls-eye, when he heard voices. Swordsman was talking to somebody, talking about cheating Carson out of the season's profits. Carson was a good man. He had taken them in, raised them. He was more like a father than Harold Barton had ever been, and Clint didn't intend to let anybody cheat him out of his life's work.

Clint's biggest flaw was his temper. God, he hated it, tried to control it, and too often failed. He was still boiling after his fight with Barney. He climbed the ladder to the high wire. He settled in the crow's nest to think. 

"Little Hawk, are you waiting for me?" 

Swordsman stood there, balancing on the wire. Clint looked up. "I heard you plotting to swindle Carson." He stood up, graceful and dangerous. He took a balance pole from where it rested on the ropes. He walked easily to the center of the wire. "You can't do that."

Swordsman lifted a brow. "I can. However, I'd be willing to cut you in on the deal if you keep your mouth shut."

"I ain't so good at that, Jacques. Bet Carson would love to know that his prize attraction is swindling him and the rest of us out of our fair share of the profits."

"Ah, little Hawk, there is no such thing in life as fair." Swordsman lunged, sweeping his pole low, undercutting Clint's legs before he could catch his balance. He fell. 

He fell, and his last memory was of Duquesne's cruel laugh before he hit the ground.

He had two broken legs, a severe concussion, a fractured elbow and cracked vertebrae. When Barney came to see him, he said he was an idiot for turning down Swordsman's offer. "We could have been rich," he sneered, "you dumb fuck."

Clint, hardly able to focus and almost screaming with pain turned away from Barney. "I thought you were my brother," he whispered.

"And I thought you weren't a weasel and a snitch. World's Greatest Marksman? You'll be a cripple in a wheelchair before you ever loose another arrow." Then he left.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^  
That's the story Clint never tells, but he tells it to Coulson. Phil knows most of it, but not about the abuse or betrayal. He remembers Clint as he saw him first -- a thin, wiry young man with the look of a half-starved wolf and the aim of Robin Hood even with the archaic bow and arrow he was using to shoot up a gang of thugs. He wasn't a hero. He wasn't a villain. He was looking for a place to call home. Coulson stayed behind the scenes, watching as Agent Sitwell talked to him. watching Barton's panic subside into something resembling relief. 

Coulson suggested to Fury that the Army might be a better place for Barton until he's ready to join S.H.I.E.L.D. Fury agreed even though he thought Coulson was seeing qualities that weren't there. Over time, Phil has proven him wrong so many times that if had wagered with Fury, he could have retired by now. 

This night, however, Clint sits on his couch, shaking like a frightened colt. Even though Clint has been through medical, been through the first mandatory debriefing and has passed both, Phil is concerned. The tremors running through him didn't start until he was past Coulson's threshold, then they broke through Clint's iron control. Phil doesn't touch him, concerned that the contact will provoke a response that they will both regret later. Instead, he makes tea and sets a mug in front of Clint. "When you're ready," is all he says, not sure that Clint hears him until he hitches one shoulder in acknowledgement.

Coulson leaves the room and changes from his suit to jeans and a sweater. When he returns, Clint is clutching the mug of tea in mostly steady hands. Phil sits in a chair, not quite facing the couch. He doesn't want this to be an interrogation. He would wait until Clint is ready to speak, but he knows Barton and he knows that Clint will lock this away as he locks everything away that could weaken him. 

After five minutes, when the shakes have subsided into tremors, Phil decides this is the moment between collapse and lockdown. "Barton, talk to me." 

Clint turns to him, his eyes dark. "Just before everything went to hell, I saw something -- no, _somebody_ I know." 

"Who?"

"My brother."

"You saw your brother."

"Barney. I haven't seen him since he walked out of my hospital room. He was hooked up with Jacques Duquesne, the Swordsman. I don't know what he's doing now, but he's not one of the good guys, Coulson. He doesn't have it in him."

"Was he responsible?"

"I don't know, but he was there. If Duquesne was, I didn't see him."

"There's more to this that you're not saying. I'm pretty sure that just seeing your brother wouldn't send you into the shakes." It's said gently, but Clint looks like Phil just struck him.

"He looked ... he never had much of what I guess you'd call a moral compass. I mean you don't walk out on your little brother when he's nearly died, do you?" There is something lost and hurting in Clint's eyes.

"No, you don't."

"You don't betray somebody who trusts you, but he did. Sometimes ... sometimes I think that I have that streak of madness in me. The lack of moral compass. I mean, look what I do, what I've done. I'm an assassin. Doesn't that tell you something about me? About being bent and twisted into somebody who kills without blinking and then walks away before the blood dries?"

"Clint, you're a sniper. It's your _job_."

"Yeah, like that's not crazy enough." 

"How many lives have you saved by taking one?" 

When Barton doesn't answer, Phil sighs. "Hundreds. Some of them I can name. Natasha, Fury, Hill, Sitwell, Tony Stark."

"Not so sure that anybody thanks me for that," Clint says with a quick breath of a laugh, "except for Stark."

Phil smiles. "There are times ..." He speaks again quietly. "You've saved mine more than I can count, and I like to think that I've saved others because you were watching my back."

"What happens when I stop feeling guilty? When I start looking for kills?"

"That won't happen."

"How can you know that?"

"I know you." 

"I thought I knew my brother. I never thought he'd turn into a madman." 

That's it. That's the key Coulson was looking for to unlock the mystery of Clint's reaction. "You have friends who will always, _always_ come for you. We'll sit beside you in the hospital, we'll help you stand when you falter, we'll pick up the pieces if you fall apart." 

"Why would you do that for me?"

"Because you do it for us. We're your family. We may not be blood, but we're in this together. We know you're not perfect, but that's okay. We're not perfect, either. Tell me that if your places had been switched, you would have turned your back on Barney."

"I would have given my life for his." There is so much raw emotion in that admission that Phil gets up and sits next to Clint on the couch. 

"Genetics isn't behind Barney's cruelty. It's been said that life consists not simply in what heredity and environment do to us but in what _we_ make out of what they do _to_ us. I'd say you've done pretty well." 

When Clint sighs and bows his back, Phil sets his warm hand across the taut muscles. He can feel the rigidity fade as the last of the tremors ease. "I'll make up the couch. You're not going home tonight."

"I'm not tired," Clint protests.

"Well, I'm not going to tuck you in," Phil smiles. "I've got beer and TV?"

"That works."

He heats up a frozen pizza, gets two beers and he and Clint spend a quiet evening watching _Storage Wars,_ one of Phil's reality shows that Clint finds occasionally interesting. Clint slouches down, closes his eyes and dozes. 

It's so rare to see him like this; restful, not filled with nervous energy or with the focused stillness of a sniper. He's so seldom at peace. At least for tonight, he's found someplace to lose his doubts and fears for a few hours. 

Phil doesn't move for another hour, then he slides away from Clint and sets up pillows. "Barton, time to ..." 

Clint opens a bleary blue eye. "Sure," he slurs and tips to the pillows. "Thanks."

Phil pulls a blanket over his shoulders and turns off the TV. In the faint light coming from the kitchen, Clint looks young, weary, like the boy Barney had left behind with a mocking taunt. Clint is a better marksman, a better _man_ than his brother would ever be. 

In the morning, he will be an extraordinary sniper. A legendary archer. Tonight, he's a man who needs a friend to get him through the darkness. 

**The End**


End file.
